Totally agree! I work for an all electric truck manufacturing company myself. Commercial trucks. May not get into PCs (Personal Cars :D) at all. Reason being, we're techies not just plain visionaries!! We sell trucks based on customers' specific drive cycle (specific route). So, you got your answer. EVs at this stage can be "The Second/Asset Car" you can use to go to the grocery store 5 miles away or pick up your kid from school close to the same distance. If anybody's dreaming on a road trip in these, it better be a 20 mile No Outlet kind.
The next option they're talking about is having a "Spare Battery". But that might mean no trunk space. This is the case even in HFCVs or any other hybrid with supercaps, etc. The fuel cells consume all the trunk space.
Right at this hour, people should be created awareness of "Conservation of Energy" rather than assure them of "Alternates".
Turn the Computer off or at least put it to sleep or hibernate when you leave the office. Take a minute and turn the car off and do a walk in for food instead of waiting 10mins in a drive thru wasting all the gas.
Preach to Get Responsible and Get Real!! :)

Interesting. I had envisioned something a little different. You bring a lift up to the car, and then essentially carry out what the video showed.
But I'm at the "get real" stage. If we are to get this into the mainstream, i.e. if we have ideas of replacing gasoline-powered cars, then all these schemes are close to silly, right? That's what I'm getting at. Stop, and let's rethink.
Take the Chevy Volt. It has an extensive battery bank too, underneath, along the centerline, etc. But how much energy does that hold? Right around 2 gallons of gasoline equivalent.
Now go into a typical interstate gas station, and imagine every car having to go through the station, not only limited to 2 gallons, but also being forced to exchange the gasoline tank, instead of just gushing in some gasoline. Thousands of gasoline tanks to fuss with every day, and either a very large area or very long queues of cars waiting for service.
There are reasons why battery-powered electric cars didn't survive long. We need an electric car that uses an easy-to-transport fuel with very high specific energy content. Batteries are nowhere close to this anytime soon.

Here's a "fun video". How come it is that Japan has all solutions. ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHHvjsFm_88
The infrastructure involves huge costs. But I'm positive we'll be there one day. We need to be. And then may be HISTORY REPEATS!

Unfortunately, I am aware of at least some of these "proposals," and the main ingredient is new battery technologies that aren't available yet. Or possible new ones that still have major hurdles (like operating at very high temperatures).
The question ought to be, why keep insisting on batteries? I'd pay a lot more attention to the innovations in fuel cells, myself.

Bert, unfortunately your comment is not "informed" there are proposed systems that would take far less time and no labor for the battery change compared to gassing a car. Not to mention longer range is likely.

I don't think a battery exchange program is credible, especially when you see how batteries are installed in all-electric cars. It would be a big, labor-intensive job, in a time when labor-saving techniques are the rule. And you'd have to do it, say on a road trip, at the very best every 100 miles. More likely twice that often, at constant freeway speeds, where the vast majority of wasted energy cannot be recycled.
Furthermore, if we are to assume that these battery electrics are the wave of the future, it would also entail an accelerated increase in the required capacity of the electric grid, just as communities everywere are opposing the installation of new high tension poles.
Instead, avoid dependency on a battery. There is a reason why automobiles evolved as they did, i.e. not using batteries as their main energy source, so I say, use that infrastructure and create modern electric drivetrains.
Back in the 1950s, entusiasts also used to rave about "a helicopter in every driveway." We see how successful that idea was.

If instead of Battery charging infrastructure , we have road side battery exchange shops who will swap your car's discharged battery bank with a fully charged battery set , then it would be ideal for the motorists. This exchange can be done in the time that the driver can have a coffee break. If the EVs are designed such that such battery replacement can be done at the roadside without much hassle then it will be a great boost to increase the popularity of EVs for long distance travel.

But I submit that none of that was obvious at the time. Horses seem like a huge inconvenience to us city folk, but at the time they seemed much less so. Likewise, gas stations seem very natural to us because we grew up with them here. Whatever replaces them (electric or whatever) will eventually create a support infrastructure that is appropriate and efficient to it.
Larry M.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.